


The Way That You See Me

by stardustedknuckles



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Future Fic, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, and that if you don't get better you're doing it wrong?, but only by a couple months, dax wrestles with relationships until the sun burns out, have you ever worried a relationship is supposed to change everything?, me either
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29703030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustedknuckles/pseuds/stardustedknuckles
Summary: Yasha's the best thing that ever happened to Beau. She deserves everything Beau is able to give. But there are times when the only things Beau has are ugly - irrational, even - and it's best to be alone for the damage control. Right?
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Comments: 29
Kudos: 227





	The Way That You See Me

She's not hiding, okay. There are a hundred other places Beau could go if she were trying not to be found. She's not hiding. She just doesn't expect anyone to come looking. And damn the pathetic little voice in her that hopes they will. She doesn't want to be alone, but this isn't a mood she can escape right now, and the others don't deserve to have it inflicted on them.

So not hiding, just…sitting alone against the wall behind the barrel of training supplies in her middle room, out of the line of sight of the door.

Which nobody is going to open, probably, and that's a _good_ thing, dammit. 

This is ridiculous, fuck. All the answers to her anxieties are there - she knows them. She knows she's overthinking. Beau is intimately, infuriatingly aware that she's thinking in circles, and about something she's been headbutting since even before that amazing date and her first step into a real relationship. Fucking exhausting to be here again, when she'd rather be down in the library hanging out with her friends and her girlfriend.

But hanging out with her friends had also kind of started this, watching the way Jester had let herself be soothed by Fjord after a frustrating series of failed spells. Beau knows what it is to feel useless, how hard it is to set aside, and it had taken Fjord what - two minutes? Two minutes, and Jester was as good as new.

Beau's been doing better in a lot of ways, but seeing that play out had touched something ugly inside of her, something that had only grown during dinner until Beau had given up and excused herself.

It's just - Jester trusts so easily, and nothing bad ever happens to her for it. Nothing that sticks. When Fjord tells her everything's okay, it just is. It's incredible. Beau loves that about her and loves Fjord for making sure that any serious consequence stays far away.

Yasha can't just tell Beau things are fine. She's got to figure out what the heart of the issue is, even when Beau can't, and sometimes that's still not enough. And it's just bothering Beau tonight, how much she wants to be able to bring a thought to Yasha and let her smash it. Yasha deserves that ability to drive the darkness from Beau's thoughts.

And instead, Beau had left.

It would make perfect sense, Beau realizes, for Yasha to go to her own room tonight. She might take the signal she's been given - the one Beau stupidly gave - and give her space. There's such a pang when Beau considers it that it snatches her breath away. She pulls her knees in closer, rests her forehead against her folded arms over them.

She wants Yasha, of course. But more than that, she wants Yasha to have a good evening untarnished by this stupid pattern. It'll go away. It always does. It's just hell while it's happening. To Beau, it's simple: if it's not something Yasha can fix, then the fallout shouldn't rest on her. Beau can handle one night by herself for Yasha's sake.

She _can_.

The door to the middle room opens, and Beau's heart does something complicated - a vertical leap of hope and a somehow instantaneous attempt to bury itself in shame.

"Beau?"

She's not hiding. She's _not_. But Yasha's calling her, and if Beau doesn't reply then even she won't be able to keep telling herself that's true. And even taking Beau out of things - if Yasha's looking, she deserves to find. Even if it's her, like this.

The words are an offering, spilling from Beau's lips to tumble down the front of her shirt like bloody jewels only she can see. "I'm over here."

Silence for a moment, and then the whisper-click of the door shutting - the split second of a coin toss where you realize which side you're hoping for. It would be best if Yasha hadn't heard, if she'd quietly left, but Yasha always hears her - of course she does - and her boots are slow and soft on the wood as she approaches.

Beau doesn't look up, but the light to her left disturbs into shadow and she can hear Yasha's every move in the quiet as she leans on the barrel's rim and looks her over.

"Hi," she says, and the affection in her quiet voice sets Beau on fire again. "Could I join you?"

It's hard to look at her but impossible not to, and gods. The sight of Yasha - every time. Beau feels awful for wandering off, for being the cause of the concern there between her eyebrows, but it only gets worse when she considers trying to explain herself. _Hey, sorry I can't get my shit together, you should go and have a good night, don't worry about me._

Maybe that's the right response - the noble one, anyway - but now that she's here, Beau can't stand the thought of her going. She offers up the scraps of a smile and shrugs a little. "Plenty of room."

It's nothing close to what she wants to say, nothing of the resounding "please" or even the apology running tandem alongside it, but Yasha seems to hear the important parts. She puts her back against the wall next to Beau and lowers slowly until they're side by side, shoulders almost touching.

The first time she'd done this, came and found Beau, it had been enough to break the spiraling thoughts. It fucking figures Beau would build up some kind of immunity to it, take it for granted. How quickly gratitude and affection are overwritten by hollow shame. Still, Beau won't risk Yasha thinking she's not still appreciative underneath, and it's no hard thing to rest her head against the sparkling green vine of her tattoo and close her eyes.

The backs of Yasha's fingers stroke softly at the exposed skin above Beau's waistband, where Beau's hand would be if her arms weren't folded. "You disappeared before dessert," she said. "I asked Mittens to keep yours warm for later."

Such a thoughtless gesture for Yasha. A foregone conclusion. Of course she did. There's never a moment of asking herself whether Beau is worth it - Yasha just does things like that.

"S'fine," she mumbles. "I missed out. But thank you."

Yasha hums quietly. "I had mine saved too."

Because she can't enjoy her food knowing Beau is off somewhere being dumb, fuck.

"Do you have any idea?" She asks to the bare room stretched wide before them. "Do you know how weird it is to have someone…just. Think about you when you're not there? Come find you for dessert?"

Yasha takes a moment. "Well, I suppose it probably feels a bit like being asked for thoughts on a group decision, or someone having a nightmare and moving closer to you." Her voice gets quieter. "Even when the nightmare is about what you did to them."

Moving closer, huh. She'll show her moving closer. Beau leans up to tug Yasha's arm out and away, and Yasha wraps it immediately around her waist as though it dangling between them had been the weird place to put it and this, here, is where it goes. Like it's settling back in a groove made for it, like Beau had been somehow constructed to fit in just this spot and now order has been restored. 

"I guess that's fair," she says after a minute. "But Yash, those are things that just…happen. They don't feel like choices. It's just what to do."

She looks up in confusion when Yasha giggles, a warm sound Beau hears from inside of her as well as outside. "Wow, it's like you like me or something."

Beau can't help a return smile even as she sticks her head back against Yasha's shoulder and bumps against it in protest of nothing at all. "I love you," she clarifies, because the wonder of being able to offer those words to Yasha, that she _wants_ them, is as bright as the first time even now, three months into this thing that they are. "I just don't know what to do with…I don't even know what I want, but you keep giving it to me."

"I was under the impression it was me you want, and that's pretty easy to give." Her hand slides up Beau's arm to rest her fingers on the ties holding Beau's hair up. "You could get a couple more days out of this, but may I?"

Such a small thing - noticing how often Beau does her hair and when it is or isn't getting close to time. Beau hadn't even been thinking about when it might need to be redone, but Yasha knows both that she doesn't fuck with it until she has to and when that'll be. "Yeah, if you help me put it back up."

It's an empty request, because Yasha loves nothing more than taking half an hour to do just that. "Deal." The next few moments are silent but for their breathing and the calm throb of her heart under Beau's ear and the gentle rustling as she slowly undoes each tie with the same patience with which she's slipped through the cracks in each of Beau's walls.

And gods, she's so grateful, but all that translates to right now is shame, and there's so much of it. "My head's being dumb," she says wretchedly. "It'll pass. It always does. But I hate making you deal with it."

Yasha's fingers are a smooth pressure as they slide through Beau's undone braid. "You don't make me do anything, Beau. You never have." She doesn't ask Beau what's eating her, and part of Beau wishes she would. If she asked, Beau couldn't refuse to answer.

But that's the exact reason Yasha never asks, just sits here and pets Beau like one of those tiny dogs that never stop shivering and waits. It should piss her off, making her feel small on top of the shame, but _small_ with Yasha only ever means _protected_ and ugh, why is this so hard?

The room begins to blur slightly as Yasha's fingers start on the braids holding the ribbons of her diadem in place. Disgusting. No, not crying. Not about this shit. She doesn't mind crying where Yasha can see, not really, but she deeply minds crying for no fucking reason.

"Yash?"

"I'm here."

Yeah. She is definitely here. Solid warmth to lean on and a steady hand in Beau's hair. "Why do you sit with me when I'm like this? I'm glad, but…I'm being dumb. It'll go away in like an hour and I'll feel ridiculous about the whole thing, and it'll leave me alone for another few weeks…why do you want to be here for it?"

"Because you don't want to be alone," Yasha says simply.

A flash of guilt. "That's basically a mandate for you, though. Because you're nice. Feels like I'm taking advantage."

"Mmm." Yasha finishes with the diadem and sets it carefully to the side - not because it's breakable, but because it's Beau's. "I've ah…done the mandate thing. I promise this isn't that."

Shit. "I didn't mean - I wasn't trying to compare to that bullshit, I just -"

"Beau." Yasha's hand makes a loose fist in her hair and tugs with no force at all, cutting her off. "Do you want to be alone?"

She's maybe the only person who could ever ask that question in a way that doesn't set off Beau's alarms. Yasha's questions don't have layers. There's nothing to see through.

But they often have points, and Beau can tell they're working up to one. "No."

Yasha's lips press softly to the crown of Beau's head. "Then this is where I want to be."

She says it like that's all there is, like it's that simple. Those damn tears again, more insistent this time because fuck, three months of the greatest thing that's ever happened to her and she's still set to come undone just at someone being _nice_ to her. Ridiculous.

But Beau has never known when to shut up and quit pressing, and she's not letting a little thing like personal growth stop her now of all times. She looks up at Yasha. "But why? I can't even tell you what the issue is half the time." She can hear her voice thickening and downshifts into the steadiness that anger affords her. She doesn't have to worry that Yasha will think it's for her. "If I can't tell you, you can't solve it, and that just means you're sitting here wasting your evening watching me wallowing around in bullshit instead of getting off my ass and fixing it."

Yasha's nails scratch lightly across Beau's scalp, and she can't stop the shiver that races through her. It forces her shoulders to relax, and Beau spends about a quarter of a second deciding she's not invested in staying tense before puddling in a little closer and blinking furiously. "If you could talk yourself out of this, you would. I've seen you do it plenty of times." Yasha's voice practically resonates with kindness, comes out deeper in her soft sincerity. "You can't win all the time."

Beau looks away and forces a smile that probably looks twice as pathetic as it feels. "All I do is win." Her voice cracks like a little bitch and yeah, that sounds about right. Heat floods her face.

Yasha's return smile is all affectionate exasperation, her other hand drifting to tilt Beau's chin up to her face. Beau drags her eyes to Yasha's, and it's not any easier to keep there but she tries her best. "I'm not leaving you to endure anything alone, Beau. Okay?"

Beau blinks hard, willing gravity to do its fucking job and pull the tears back inside of her. "That's great for real problems, Yash. This is dumb. This is like getting attacked by a. A goldfish or something. It's all in my head."

"Exactly."

Beau takes a moment to try and parse the weight in that one word, but it's not coming. She focuses on Yasha again, and she doesn't keep Beau waiting.

"I know better than to underestimate what your head can do," she murmurs. "I have seen you put things together that had no relation and solve puzzles that saved the world. You control entire battlefields before anyone even knows you're a threat." She leans now, dips her head so that their foreheads touch and Beau can only stare, wide-eyed. "You are a wonder, Beau, and I never want to see anybody I love on your bad side. Especially you."

The tears come then, hot and harsh on the backs of Beau's eyes. Yasha lets her wiggle free from the hand under her chin to bury her face into Yasha's shirt again and try to breathe deeply and quietly.

"Don't you feel helpless?" She whispers when it feels possible again. "I do, when it's me. Like I can't do anything but watch while you lose yourself for a little while. I hate that feeling. Hate making you feel it."

Yasha's arm disappears from Beau's shoulder to wrap comfortably around Beau's waist again. "Do you ever think to stop, when it's me?"

Beau flinches. "Gods, no. But yours…" And she catches it, sees the end of that thought coming and cuts it off viciously. There's nothing to gain by comparing their lives, and she knows from past experience that it really will hurt Yasha if she goes there and tries to downplay her own experience. She might be having a rough night, but she's nowhere near far gone enough to be heedless of the effects her actions might have on Yasha. "I couldn't do anything else," she says instead. "Not knowing you're upset and alone."

"Yeah," Yasha says softly.

The bitch of it all is that Beau _knows_. She knows the point Yasha is making, and it's even a good one, but her mind is eating itself alive and it doesn't care right now how good the point is. She feels cut off, like the solution is just on the other side of some invisible line that won't let her fully grasp it.

And to top that off, the worst part of this is that everything swirling in Beau, all of this shit that won't leave her in peace - it's all damage from _other fucking people_. None of it came from Yasha, but she's the one here left to deal with the fallout. How is Beau supposed to be able to understand her wanting to be here? How does that make any sense? _Beau_ doesn't even want to be here.

But Yasha _is_ here, and it's still not enough to make it all stop. How rich, to know how much she's loved and still be unable to take the hand offered her. Maybe some part of her just wants to stay here.

Yasha shifts to look at her again, and the movement makes Beau realize she's crying in earnest now. "Beau?"

She drags a rough hand under her eyes and sniffs hard. "I'm sorry, I. I keep telling you I trust you, and I still." Her words jam, and Beau takes a harsh sip of air and keeps going before she can come to a complete halt. "I thought this would stop, but it keeps happening. I feel like I'm lying to you. Maybe I can't trust and I'm just stuck like this." She braces her hand on Yasha's thigh. "It's easy to give myself to you too, but fuck, Yasha. Look at what I've got to give."

Yasha's hands are kind but firm when they grip Beau's shoulders and hold her out, and they don't give an inch when Beau squirms uselessly back towards the warmth and the dark of Yasha's shirt. "Just a moment," she says softly. "I'm looking." 

The thought of being still and letting Yasha look at her feels impossible, but she asked and Beau can do nothing else. She stays still in Yasha's grasp and tries to breathe deeply. She does turn her face, though - she has to, or she won't be able to ask the question burning hotter now than even the shame. "What do you see?"

Yasha's fingers dig in against Beau's skin - not to hurt, but to ground. "Trust," she says. Then, almost to herself, "It is so beautiful."

Bewilderment trumps the sour taste in Beau's mouth, and she looks up. "How?"

Yasha takes one hand away to gesture around them. "I am here in your room. With you. I opened your door and I came in...you answered when I called, you...you let me in because you wanted me."

"Well yeah," Beau manages. "I always want you. But it's selfish to take advantage -"

"No."

Beau cuts off immediately, tries to swallow. There's an intensity to Yasha's voice, a finality that crashes through her memories and snaps her eyes to Yasha's to search out the shade of it. Anger? Exasperation? Annoyance?

Yasha's face is far softer than her voice, but there is no room on it for argument or yield. "I don't do things I don't want to anymore. I learned that from all of you, and besides - it _hurts you_ to think of me doing something I don't want to." She reaches to wipe the tears from under Beau's eyes, and her hands are so gentle. Yasha always handles Beau with so much more care than Beau herself. "I would never hurt you."

"I know," Beau whispers. "I know."

"That's trust," Yasha says. "And I trust you too. I get...lost sometimes, even now. You've seen me. You know that's not about you, right?"

Beau nods, a jerky an uncoordinated thing. "Yeah. And...you have all of the trust I know how to give. I just." She looks at her hands, open in her lap, and curls them into fists. "I should be stronger than this. Especially with you here helping me. I feel like...I'm not letting you help. I don't know how."

Yasha smiles in a way that looks halfway to tears of her own, an expression filled to the brim with blazing affection and…warmth. Love. There's not a better way to put it. "Beau, there's nothing for me to help. This isn't something to be fixed."

"What?"

Yasha cups her face, and Beau's hands come up automatically to hold her wrists. "I'm not here to make you strong. You already are."

Beau swallows. "That's kind of hard to believe right now." Another tear escapes, and this one Yasha leans forward to kiss away.

"Nobody is always strong," she whispers into Beau's cheek. "This is the part I'm here for. When it runs out."

The concept of faltering strength would be completely foreign to Beau if she hadn't seen Yasha at her lowest - if she didn't find Yasha stronger for her moments of (perceived) weakness. Beau loves her _more_ somehow, in those moments, but the idea that Yasha could feel the same about this keeps bouncing off of Beau's comprehension. 

Beau pulls their hands down, leaving them joined and staring hard at the lattice of their fingers. "I don't know how to be okay with this," she whispers. "You like that I'm strong. You said it blows you away, that I can do all of this myself." She gestures between them. "I'm kind of ruining that whole image right now."

"You did so much without help," Yasha agrees. "People who should have been there for you let you down over and over, and I am so proud of the way you pushed through. But Beau." Yasha grasps her hands more tightly until she looks up. "You're not strong because you did it alone. You did it alone because _you were already strong_." She looks almost desperate now, cracked with a sorrow Beau can't begin to identify. "I know you could do this alone too, but _gods_ , Beau. You shouldn't have to. You never should have had to."

Honestly, Beau's kind of lost for a minute after that. She ducks up against Yasha's chest and feels herself held, feels Yasha's chin find its spot on her head, and yeah. She's definitely hiding now.

But it's Yasha casting the shadow - Yasha _wants_ to be the place Beau hides and she's right, gods she's _right_. The inability to pull herself out of her head isn't about trust. There's no trust in letting Yasha fix it, because she can't. The trust is here - in allowing Yasha to witness her when she's at her worst. When she's helpless, when her strength is useless, when all she can do is endure. With Yasha, trust isn't a decision for Beau to fuck up. Like strength, it's just there already.

And the difference it makes...it changes everything, because doubting herself is easy but doubting Yasha is impossible. If Yasha says she's enough, anything else is just Beau, shadowboxing until she's exhausted. 

The exhaustion is familiar, but this part is new. The wonder of Yasha's solid body and the pressure of her warm arms across Beau's spine, the mundane miracle of her shirt wrinkled between Beau's clenched fingers and the way Beau's left leg feels like it might be starting to cramp. For the first time, there's _good_ on the other side - something besides the dead sleep of desperation to escape. Yasha's here, waiting for her and humming an absentminded and simple melody as her hand drifts up and down Beau's back. Yasha is _so much good_ , and like this Beau is completely safe.

It'll happen again. Give her a few weeks, a couple of months, and something will set off another one of these tidal waves and wash her completely under. It's a truth of being Beau: there's no stopping the storm. Forces of nature aren't negotiable, or even moral. They just are.

Yasha is herself a kind of storm, and that's probably a lot of why she knows exactly how to hold Beau, how she already understands what Beau is only just beginning to see.

When Beau finally pulls back from the damp heat of Yasha's chest, she finds her smiling down at her with a quiet kind of pride. "Hello again." There's no concern for Beau to perceive, no worry - only calm as she reaches out to peel a damp strand of Beau's hair from her cheek. "I missed you."

Beau coughs a trembling laugh. "Missed you too," she replies, because saying she hadn't gone anywhere wouldn't technically be true. She had, and that's…okay, somehow. Yasha's not here to hold her down. She's the place Beau returns to - the lighthouse in the distance shining _home, home_.

Her lips are soft on Beau's sweaty forehead, which is kinda gross in a way that makes the gesture feel even sweeter. Yasha drags her blunt fingernails over the shaved skin of Beau's undercut just behind her ear. "What do you need now?"

Beau leans into her touch and closes her eyes, thinks that this might be it - sitting here in Yasha's arms and feeling scrubbed raw from the inside, clean.

Clean, and also hungry.

She turns her faintly stinging eyes up to Yasha's. "How's uh…I could go for that dessert now, maybe?"

Yasha's smile brightens. "I was hoping you'd say that. Wait til you see it. It's a little cake, but there's a…like a warm goo? But it's chocolate." There are practically stars in her eyes just describing it, her voice gone soft with that wonder she so freely gives to the world around her. A bone-deep ache of affection ripples through Beau just watching her.

There aren't words for how much it means to her to be handled this way by Yasha - a profound gentleness not out of caution for breaking her, but because she's precious to Yasha, because that's what you do for precious things. If Beau's just weathered the storm, the feeling she gets watching Yasha and thinking _I belong here_ fills her with the force of sunlight punching through the clouds.

Yasha's describing the ice cream on the dessert when Beau leans forward and kisses her, eliciting a little surprised "mmph" that immediately relaxes into a pleased, unhurried response - the punctuation, the seal on the whirlwind of the last half hour. Beau's hands lift to Yasha's face of their own accord and all of it is so sweet, so good. Kissing Yasha always makes Beau's chest lurch, her heart pound, and it's a relief to feel that pressure now as a weightless clench of light and joy. There's none of the dread or the fear - after everything, Yasha is a balm.

"Sorry," Beau breathes when they break apart. "Please keep talking forever. I just needed to do that."

Yasha's smiling and holding both of Beau's hands in her own, and she gets to her feet to pull Beau up gently with her. "I think I would like a bath with my dessert. Will you join me?"

Beau smiles and hopes Yasha can see even half of the contentment and affection straining against the cage of her ribs. "Follow you anywhere."

Yasha just looks at her for a moment, tracing her fingers along the hollow under Beau's ear. "I feel exactly the same."

**Author's Note:**

> I've struggled in the relationship department, can you tell? If you're autistic like me, you might vibe with this a little harder, but I think it's probably a fairly universal experience - especially if you're someone who struggles with ever feeling less than in perfect control of yourself.


End file.
